nal was convicted on fuller and more undoubted evidence. Two
and twenty persons, who had been students at St. Omers, most of them men
of credit and family, gave evidence, that Oates had entered into that
seminary about Christmas in the year 1678, and had never been absent
but one night till the month of July following. Forty-seven witnesses,
persons also of untainted character, deposed that Father Ireland, on the
third of August, 1679, had gone to Staffordshire, where he resided till
the middle of September; and, what some years before would have been
regarded as a very material circumstance, nine of these witnesses were
Protestants of the church of England. Oates's sentence was, to be fined
a thousand marks on each indictment, to be whipped on two different days
from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn, to be imprisoned
during life, and to be pilloried five times every year. The impudence of
the man supported itself under the conviction, and his courage under the
punishment. He made solemn appeals to Heaven, and protestations of the
veracity of his testimony: though the whipping was so cruel, that it
was evidently the intention of the court to put him to death by that
punishment, he was enabled, by the care of his friends, to recover; and
he lived to King William's reign, when a pension of four hundred pounds
a year was settled on him. A considerable number still adhered to him in
his distresses, and regarded him as the martyr of the Protestant cause.
The populace were affected with the sight of a punishment more severe
than is commonly inflicted in England. And the sentence of perpetual
imprisonment was deemed illegal.

The conviction of Oates's perjury was taken notice of by the house of
peers. Besides freeing the Popish lords, Powis, Arundel, Bellasis, and
Tyrone, together with Danby, from the former impeachment by the commons,
they went so far as to vote a reversal of Stafford's attainder,
on account of the falsehood of that evidence on which he had been
condemned. This bill fixed so deep a reproach on the former proceedings
of the exclusionists, that it met with great opposition among the lords;
and it was at last, after one reading, dropped by the commons. Though
the reparation of injustice be the second honor which a nation can
attain, the present emergence seemed very improper for granting so full
a justification to the Catholics, and throwing so foul a stain on the
Protestants.

The course of parli